AUSTIN, Texas — A motorcyclist was killed after he crashed on State Highway 130 and then was hit by two vehicles. One of the vehicles was a Tesla reportedly operating on autopilot.
The 80-mile-per-hour speed limit on SH 130 was likely a factor in what happened. A car traveling that fast is moving at a speed of 117 feet per second. At that speed, and at around 5 a.m., people and self-driving cars are put to the test in terms of how fast they can react to the unexpected.
“I think I would have hit the body of that motorcyclist, as well. I think it is really hard at those speeds to avoid anything in the darkness of night,” said Kara Kockelman, Professor of Transportation Engineering at UT Austin.
A motorcyclist was killed early Tuesday morning in a crash that shut down the northbound lanes of State Highway 130 near FM 969.
According to a preliminary investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the rear tire on the motorcycle blew out, causing the rider to lose control. The person was thrown onto the roadway, and the motorcycle came to rest on the shoulder.
DPS investigators say the rider was then hit by two vehicles. First by an SUV, and then the person was struck a second time by a Tesla operating in Autopilot mode.
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According to DPS, the Tesla driver told troopers the vehicle did not detect the person lying on the roadway.
“The Tesla only has cameras, and at nighttime with only their beams for illumination it is probably not going to be able to see it,” said Kockelman. “I don’t think most of us could have avoided it, given that our headlamps illuminate very little of the road ahead of us.”
The UT professor said the standard illumination of headlamps is 150 feet and high-beam mode might increase that to 400 feet. The standard stopping sight distance is 910 ft at 80 mph speeds.
Kockelman said under those conditions it would be difficult for both humans and autonomous vehicles to detect and react to many things lying on the highway.
The UT Austin professor says other self-driving vehicles using different technology might be better able to detect objects on the road than Tesla vehicles.
“Radar and lidar are redundant technologies on Waymo vehicles and other self-driving vehicles that will generally be able to pick that up. But they often do not want to hurt their own occupants at those high speeds, so they are pretty careful about how much they can react and would probably still hit it, maybe just at a lower speed,” said Kockelman.
The motorcyclist, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.
CBS Austin reached out to Tesla for more information but had not heard back as of 7 p.m. on Wednesday.